Rubber Ducky Party -1yr- Duckies in the Punch

Cost effectiveness was a key point when it came to my daughter's one year birthday. I wanted to worry more about her presents than her party, so I worked hard to spend as little as possible. She has loved her rubber ducks since she started taking real baths, so that was definitely the theme.

With the invitations, I went to our local crafts store and purchased 8.5 x 11" scrapbook paper that was bordered with balloons and confetti. I made the rest on my computer. I took a picture of my daughter in the bath covered in bubbles. I loaded that picture into WordPerfect and found ducky clipart on the web. I took the clipart and had them facing the picture of her in the tub. Then in blue font I filled in all of the party information with cute sayings like Waddle On Over To and Send Us a Quack at etc. I found blue envelopes at Staples and decorated them with ducky and bubble stickers.

I purchased a personalized ducky birthday banner and small dessert plates at celebrateexpress.com. I then bought blue table covers and yellow napkins and a ton of rubber duckys. I had blue and clear balloons all over the room with a large mylar duck balloon. I decorated 24 9oz yellow paper cups with duck feet and bills and labeled them Duck Feed and filled them with goldfish crackers.

We served appetizers because it was cheaper than serving a meal. We had cheese and quackers chips a veggie platter a deviled egg platter a dip with crackers and things that were simple to prepare. We bought all of our bowls and platters from the dollar store. We even bought inflatable duck tubs for pools and placed them around the food bowls. I bought the Pillsbury ready to cook sugar cookies and rolled them out and cut them with duck cookie cutters.

I made milk frosting colored yellow to decorate them. I also made cupcakes with blue icing small duck icing candies and white sugar pearls to look like bubbles. We had two cakes one my mother made that was around with blue icing ducks and frosting bubbles. The other we ordered from our local supermarket with the picture from the invitation and two ducks on each side. My mother also decorated that cake with the butter cream bubbles. I made blue punch and floated ducks in it.

Since there were only a few little kids at the party I printed out coloring book pages off of the computer that looked like ducks and purchased crayons at the dollar store. For party favors we went to Target Portraits and had her pictures taken. They do a bath scene with my daughter in the bathtub and rubber ducks all around her. We had wallets printed of that and handed them out after the party with

Thank you for coming to my One Year Birthday Party! Hope you had a splashing good time! Written on the back. We set aside some ducks and let the kids at the party choose which of the other ones they wanted to take home. All in all it was a cost effective and fun party! It was a lot of work but it was all worth while when my daughter saw all of the decorations!"